


We Need To Talk

by aggressivelybicaptainamerica



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, Recovery, The Players' Tribune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggressivelybicaptainamerica/pseuds/aggressivelybicaptainamerica
Summary: Everyone knows the Zimms and Parse story.  Best friends who tore it up in juniors and were ready to take the NHL by storm until one of them buckled and couldn’t handle the pressure.  I was the victor, they said.  The one who profited.  The one who went first and won first and succeeded first.  That’s the story, right?That’s not half the story, and its barely even true.Or; Kent Parson tells his side of the story.





	We Need To Talk

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who don't know, the Player's Tribune is a website filled with articles written by pro sports players, including hockey, talking about various parts of being a pro or trying to be a pro. Lots of stuff about trades, struggling with injury or being in the minors, and so on. I highly recommend that you check it out.
> 
> Also Bell Let's Talk Day is the one day of the year that the NHL pretends to care about mental health. (Spoilers: They don't.)

We Need To Talk

By Kent Parson

Everyone knows the Zimms and Parse story.  Best friends who tore it up in juniors and were ready to take the NHL by storm until one of them buckled and couldn’t handle the pressure.  I was the victor, they said.  The one who profited.  The one who went first and won first and succeeded first.  That’s the story, right?

That’s not half the story, and its barely even true.

We all knew Jack was an addict.  And it wasn’t just the anxiety medications.  He drank, and popped pills but it didn’t matter to coach or anyone else as long as he was still performing, as long as he was on track for a number one draft pick.  He wasn’t making a scene.  Everything happened behind closed hotel room doors.  He was winning, and he was quiet and that was all anyone seemed to care about.

Jack paid the price for that, of course.  The pain of rehab, of having your whole life shattered and having to put it back together, that’s no joke.  And that overdose will hang over him for the rest of his life.  It’s not an easy burden to bear.

But neither is finding your best friend unconscious in a pool of his own vomit and being asked three days later if you’re glad he buckled because that means you got to go first overall instead.

For the record, I would have loved to have gone second in my draft.  I loved Jack with every scrap of my being.  We won together and we lost together.  He was my very first kiss.  I’ve never wished him ill, not then and not now.

People downplay my party boy reputation from my first few years on the Aces, but playing well doesn’t make it less true.  I can count on one hand the games that weren’t followed by too much booze my first season and I came to practices hung-over more often than not.  The nights I wasn’t out at bars trying to drink enough to like the pretty girls who flirted with me I was sitting at home in my too empty apartment.  It didn’t matter though because I was a rookie in contention for the Art Ross and a shoe in for the Calder.  I was getting butts in the seats, putting up points like it was going out of fashion, and as long as I was dragging this team up out of the Vegas dirt, I could get away with everything.

Halfway through my second season I wrapped my flashy Porche convertible around a bridge support while blackout drunk and that was when the people around me realized that maybe this was actually a problem.

Without Jeff Troy, I’d probably have died in a ditch somewhere that year.

I was furious on the restrictions the team began to put on me, and he just quietly absorbed half a season worth of tantrums as he tried to help me as best he could.  It was Jeff who invited me into his house, who put me up in a guest room that felt more like home in the weeks I stayed there than my first apartment ever did. He helped me sell that place, and helped me find a place that I actually liked instead of what I thought I should want.  He made the first contact with my therapist, and held my hand in the waiting room. He suggested that I get Kit when I moved.  The Aces just put a bandage over the gaping trauma I was dealing with, but Swoops…Well, he put in the stitches that actually let me heal.

I was diagnosed with PTSD the summer after my second season with the Aces.  I spent two weeks in an inpatient program, and I’ve taken Prozac ever since.  I’ve been dry for as long, and I don’t know who to thank for the non-alcoholic champagne we filled two Stanley Cups with, but I’ll take a moment to say thank you anyway, because without you someone would have noticed and said something.

And for so long, the thing I was most afraid of, more than injury and party boy misdeeds, was having someone notice that I was sick.

But I’ve learned that shame is an anathema to recovery.  Because the only reason I’m truly ashamed of what happened to me and what I’ve had to do to recover from it is because I was told that was the proper response.  I was taught that emotional fragility was weakness, that suffering was something that you just had to deal with because asking for help made you soft and if there’s one thing a hockey player can’t be its soft.

I was eighteen when my best friend overdosed, and I heard the way you talked about him and wanted nothing more than to avoid that being directed at me.

Don’t you understand how fucked up it is to put that on kids?  Because at the end of the day, Jack and I were kids, and he was popping pills and I was getting drunk and _no one cared_.  And when we finally cracked?  We got kid gloves, pity and ridicule.

The draft is coming up, and with it the anniversary of the single most traumatic experiences of my life.  Every year I can’t help but wonder which kid is the next Jack Zimmerman.  Which kid who silently disappears from hockey because of this stuff.  Which kid who doesn’t get the benefit of a famous father to remind the world that the world of professional sports is cruel and who ends up ‘unable to handle the pressure’ and just fades away.

Every Bell Let’s Talk Day, I think about what talking about mental health really means.  It means crying.  It means dragging yourself out of bed and telling someone that you want to crawl into a pill bottle or a beer can.  It means not judging.  It means paying attention and learning how to really help each other.  It means believing that mental health is just as important as physical health, and taking mental pain seriously when it happens to yourself and to your teammates and friends.

Every year I’ve thought about posting this article for Bell Let’s Talk Day, and every year I haven’t.  Because if we only spend one day a year talking about it, if the only day we can talk is an ‘acceptable’ one, what’s really changing?

We do need to talk.  Not just one day a year, but every day.

**Author's Note:**

> Am I super salty about how this comic never gave any resolution to either my favorite character or my favorite story arc because it doesn't want to talk about difficult things? Yes. Yes I am. Also shout out to the salt baes of the Discord chat. I love y'all and you're great.


End file.
